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Top1. Introduction
To become more productive, faster, smart and accurate, almost every major organization or industry has invested for computerizing their day to day mechanisms. It has helped easing and smoothing everyday life. Banking, shopping, airline booking and ticketing are just few to name. Otherwise, virtually all businesses are going online. Yet, despite all these advancements in our society, there are a large number of patients who are being dealt in a traditional way. For example, they are given handwritten lab tests, medication prescriptions, appointments and others. Having electronic medical record (EMR) systems is a need of the time. It will enormously help to transform the health care system from a traditional paper-based mechanism to automated online systems. It will help utilizing clinical information in delivering higher quality in terms of accuracy, time, efficiency and care to the patients as well as medical care staff. Having EMR systems has a high probability to reduce the possibilities for errors which are very evident in typical manual operations. It promotes human friendly environment which improves communication of information in the medical related activities. EMR systems subsequently assist the organizations and the society as a whole (Menachemi & Collum, 2011).
Patients may find difficulties with finding their medical results and tracking their health history. They may also face some problems with setting an appointment with a doctor just to read their test results. In a traditional scenario, it is very time consuming and may take several days or even weeks to find the most convenient appointment with the doctor to only view the medical test results. Another problem we are currently facing is seeking for a blood donator when in need. It is a very complex process to find the right person to get blood from. Some seekers may find it very difficult to search for donators because there is no specific system that may help them to seek for blood. Most successful businesses are those that are great with their services. During a patient’s life, patients usually struggle to find their medical results ready and combined in one place. An EMR system would surely assist patients to look for their results and have them all saved in their profiles.
Currently, various EMR systems exist in different parts of the world to meet day to day requirements of the patients as well as medical staff. Major expectations to be fulfilled by such systems are that they should be flexible, accurate, complete. It should serve the users and their data that are utilized by clinicians to improve the quality overall. One of the EMR systems that attracted authors attention is the LimitLIS (“Laboratory Information Systems,” 2017), it has numerous possibilities designed to increase accuracy, efficiency and productivity. It also has a friendly end user interface. A second EMR system which was really comprehensive for both users is the Charm Health (“Charm Health,” 2018). This system is accurate, Both of the systems are accurate, available, secure and they perform nicely.
This paper proposes, designs and implements an EMR system which can become a part and parcel of a global telehealth system. This is a computer-based real time online automated system which has been developed to replace the traditional system with manual processes. The proposed system, named KEMR (Kuwait Electronic Medical Record) system is an innovative endeavor of the use of technology to benefit the community related to medical tests and treatments. It will help the patients, doctors, nurses and others improving their day to day routine work. The system, as a special case, has been oriented for the state of Kuwait to improve its healthcare sector. However, it can be easily oriented to fulfill the needs of other countries with some minor variations of local requirements.
The KEMR offers several services that help patients through their journey. It manages their appointments, medical records as well as sending tests through emails to different hospitals and medical labs in Kuwait. It also helps the hospitals to use this system in order to extend, improve and control their daily activities to incorporate it into a new automated interface. This actually saves time and effort for all patients, hospitals and medical labs. Providing such a system which will facilize the patients’ ability to access their test results from their home or anywhere else in anytime as well as sharing their results easily with an expert. The system will be more efficient if patients can seek and search for blood donors easily. Implementing this system will make patients life easier in so many ways.